The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller

by Stewart, A. J.

  “Confirming IMEI. Unit is connecting with our tower. Affirmative one, we have the clone.”

  “Keep on him. I want all traffic to and from his device.”

  “We’ll have it.”

  The team leader ended the call, sat back in his seat, and let out a long sigh. He closed his eyes to give them what little rest he could, and then he settled in to wait.

  * * *

  Flynn was lying on top of the covers on the bed, on his back with his hands behind his head, the scent of bourbon still hanging in the room, when the beep from his phone woke him up. He took a second to recall where he was, and then he leaned over and picked up his phone. As he did, he checked his watch: 2 a.m.

  He brought up the message that had come in. It was a basic phone with a simple screen that offered two lines of text. It was enough.

  Checked notes, background on Berg, few notes on Luna - proof?

  Flynn blinked hard and read it again. He wondered what the proof reference meant. Did the notes suggest someone had proof of something, or was Olsen asking if the notes themselves were proof? It was late, but Olsen was clearly awake, so Flynn sat up and hit the button to call back. It rang five times before it was answered.

  “Hello,” said Olsen in English.

  “It’s me,” said Flynn.

  “You know I don’t know your name.”

  “Call me Jack Thompson.” Thompson had been the backup quarterback in 1981 when the Cincinnati Bengals made the Super Bowl. Flynn liked using Bengal backup QBs as fake names, especially in Europe where no one ever picked up on them.

  “All right, Jack. Why are you calling me?”

  “You just sent me a text message.”

  “Yes, I know. So why did you call?”

  “You mentioned something about proof? Proof of what?”

  “I don’t know. There’s some background on Berg, which you said Poulsen was working on, and there are some notes from interviews at the commune. She mentions recollections of Berg a long time ago, in the past, as a young man, I suppose.”

  “What about the proof?”

  “She wrote the name Luna and underlined it. That’s what I noticed first. That was the girl’s name, yes?”

  “Yes. So Luna had proof?”

  “Poulsen wrote a notation—it’s in Danish, of course. But it mentions bevis, which translates into English as evidence or proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “It doesn’t say. It’s one line, and it says the proof, the evidence . . . She writes hvor hun bliver, which means roughly something like where she lives. So it more or less says the proof is where she lives.”

  “Where Luna lived?”

  “That’s my assumption. Where did she live?”

  “She lived in a lot of places. She lived in Copenhagen, and she moved back to the community, where she lived in her parents’ old home.”

  “So maybe it’s there.”

  “That’s the house that burned down.”

  “The house she lived in burned down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that how she died?”

  “No.”

  “But if there was proof of something there?”

  “Then it burned in the house,” said Flynn.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked Olsen.

  “I still need to see that book. Maybe seeing the words will jog something.”

  “It’s all in Danish.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Okay,” said Olsen. “The bibliotek, as agreed.”

  “As agreed.”

  Flynn ended the call, pulled the battery out, and put the phone back on the bedside table. He lay back and put his hands behind his head. The hint of bourbon in the room threatened to pull him away, but he was thankful that fatigue won out, and he fell asleep before the memories could take hold.

  * * *

  The team leader wasn’t asleep, but he was startled by the crackle of his radio.

  “One, we have comms from the target’s phone.”

  “What do you have?”

  “One text, outbound. One call, inbound. Same number.”

  “Who called him?”

  “It sounds like the American.”

  “Can you pinpoint a location?”

  “No. We need the phone company for that. I’ll send you the files.”

  The team leader rubbed his eyes and took out his phone, a smartphone with encryption technology. He opened it and saw the files come in. The first was a copy of the text message, something about proof from the girl. Then he clicked on the other file, and audio of the call played. Something about the proof being at the girl’s house, and the house having burned down. It wasn’t news to the team leader. The most important point was that Olsen and the American planned to meet again.

  He turned to his driver. “Call it in. Get everything we can on an American called Jack Thompson.”

  The team leader looked at his phone and thought about making his own call. Klaasen wanted to be kept up-to-date but he had also become used to regular sleep and wouldn’t thank the team leader for waking him up. The team leader didn’t think there was anything important to report, anyway. Klaasen knew about the girl and the house. He knew about the possibility of some kind of proof—the nature of which he had never shared with the team leader. He would be pleased to know that whatever this proof might have been was lost in the fire. That hadn’t been the point of burning the house, but it was a nice side benefit.

  The team leader slipped his phone into his pocket. He would wait for the new day to call Klaasen. And he would use the time to plan and to get himself some sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The room was still dark when Flynn woke up. He lay still for a moment, breathing in the cool early morning air. He sat up and placed his feet on the floor, finding the hardwood cold. The open bottle of bourbon sat where he had left it on the floor. He picked up the bottle and padded down the hallway to the bathroom. He poured the entire contents of the bottle down the drain and then screwed the cap on and sat it on the counter while he used the toilet and washed his face in the sink.

  Flynn put on his socks and boots, slipped on his jacket, and pulled the duvet taut across the bed. He slipped the empty bottle into his jacket pocket and took the phone and battery from the bedside table. Then he walked out the front door and gently pulled it closed.

  The neighborhood was quiet, but the day was just beginning. The sky in the east was tinted indigo, and birds were starting their morning routines, twittering and washing and flying around looking for breakfast. A few homes had lights burning, the early risers preparing for the day. It was Flynn’s favorite part of the day

  He wandered back to the metro station and caught the train into the city. He got off short of the central station. He wanted to get his pack and change his clothes, but for now his face wash would have to do. If he had been found twice before, there was every chance someone would be watching a central hub like the train station.

  What he wanted right now was an espresso. He walked a short distance from the station and found a café. A man was putting a chalkboard out with the daily specials, which didn’t look like they had changed in decades. Flynn nodded and held the door open for the man and then took a seat at the bar. He made sure they had an espresso machine and then ordered a double shot and some toast with English bacon. The espresso was thick and heady and brought the day on.

  The café owner served him a second espresso and then moved to serve some other customers who were dressed like bankers. Flynn guessed they were in early for the Asian markets.

  The dawn cracked open across the sky like a yolk, and the traffic picked up as Flynn turned to his toast and bacon. The toast was dense, better than most American bread, but the bacon was vastly inferior, lacking the smokiness that he missed from his homeland.

  As he munched, he watched each person who came into the café, and his thoughts turned to the men who were following him. Something about that had changed. Ther
e was a similarity—in look and attitude and tactics—between the guys who were protecting the surveyors at the burned Fisker house and the guys who had followed him to Møn. They had the look and feel of hired muscle rather than hired brains.

  But as he ran it through his mind, the events of the previous night offered something different. Those guys were organized in a different way. Not frontal in their attack. They had come from all angles—the one on foot and then the car that had chased him to the water taxi. The guy on foot had been tall and slender—not muscle, no kind of gym junkie. He might have handled himself well—Flynn had no way of knowing that—but he wasn’t just built for show.

  And then there was the car. It was a sedan, probably black or very dark blue. Possibly an Opel, perhaps a Ford. But a full-size sedan, not a little European buzz box, and certainly not a Land Rover. Not part of Lund’s crew. Different guys, different look, different approach, different vehicle.

  Which was a problem.

  It meant there was a second set of bodies involved. Either separately from Lund, or possibly as a result of their failures. And two sets of guys were harder to spot than one set. It also meant there were now two motivations at play. It was a tactic that Flynn had exploited often back when he and his team had hunted terrorists. When there was one person involved, there was one motivation. As soon as two people were involved, the probability of split motives became real. Even fundamentalists who claimed to be doing it all for some kind of higher power had their own personal motivation deep down. No two people ever saw the world the same exact way. There were always hierarchies to be exploited, desires and needs and families that could be used to divide otherwise tight cells.

  Food for thought.

  Flynn lingered over his breakfast but eventually made his way out into the world. He walked away from the city and across a bridge and found a long thin stretch of green called Fredens Park. At one end children played on equipment that looked more like art. He moved away from the playground—a lone man sitting for an extended time near a kid’s playground tended to draw attention. Instead he sat and watched local people as they walked small dogs. The dogs did their business on the grass and then kicked it around and were then led away, back to whatever apartment they lived in. A woman sat on a bench talking into a phone as if she was breaking up with someone. The tears welling in her eyes couldn’t be faked. A man in a suit threw pieces of bread to an angry flock of pigeons. People strode by with their faces in screens, not watching where they were going but somehow not colliding with other screen watchers as often as probability would have suggested.

  Flynn waited. There were many things the Legion had taught him, skills that were useful and some not so much. He knew about weapons and tactics, and he had learned French and a good deal of Farsi. He learned how to work in a team and how to lead one. He learned to read people, and he devoured every psychology book he could find in either English or French. But more than anything else, the Legion taught him to march and to wait. Long distances marching and long periods waiting. He would march again soon enough.

  Now it was time to wait.

  * * *

  Hans Lund woke early too. He was sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee and reading the newspaper when his phone started chirping at him.

  “What,” he spat.

  “Boss, you at home?”

  “Of course I’m at home. Where else would I be? Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m outside your gate.”

  “So come in, damn you, and stop messing me around.”

  “I would, boss, but there’s a car blocking the driveway.”

  Lund cursed, slipped off his stool, and pulled at the tie on his robe as he strode to the front door. He got in his BMW and rolled down to the end of the driveway. The gates were closed, but he could see the black Land Rover parked across the way. Lund knew it was one of his before he even got out.

  He labored out of the BMW and his robe fell open, revealing his broad stomach to the cold morning breeze, but he didn’t move to pull it closed. His mouth dropped open, and he stepped to the gate. His man stood by the Land Rover. They both knew who had used the car. They both knew that man had a broken nose, and they both knew he had gone to take care of the spare American but instead had dropped off the face of the earth.

  “You want me to move it, boss?” called the guy.

  “You know he looked after the keys,” said Lund. He gestured at the stranded Land Rover minus its driver, whom Lund had made responsible for the management and upkeep of his fleet. “You got any idea where he kept the spares?”

  “None, boss.”

  Lund looked at his man and then at the car. It was a message, a taunt. Hans Lund snarled. He sprayed gravel as he turned on his heel. He stumbled back to the BMW and sped off toward the house. He was on the phone before he got there.

  It rang too many times. Hans Lund was not a patient man, and he didn’t care what time of day it was.

  “This better be good,” mumbled Victor Berg.

  “Who the hell are these guys?” screamed Lund, and then he spat a phlegmy cough as the morning air hit his lungs.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “These Americans. One of my guys has gone missing.”

  “Maybe he’s drunk on a barroom floor.”

  “Then why is his car—my car—parked across my driveway!”

  Berg was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay, Berg. It’s far from okay. One of my best men has disappeared after going to get the other American. And now they’re sending me a message, Berg. Well, I’m going to send one back.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Lund.”

  “You fail to understand our relationship, Berg. You don’t tell me what to do. It’s the other way around. I pay you damned well to do things for me. So listen up. My guys are tooling up, and they are going out to find these guys, and they are going to take them out as soon as they see them. I don’t care if they are alone in a park or in a church congregation, you hear me? We’re going to take them out!”

  “Lund, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

  “Lund!” yelled Berg. “You listen up. I have people on it. Not amateurs. Professionals, people who do this for a living. The kind of people I have access to because I’m in the Folketinget. You understand me? They will handle it. You need to pull your guys back and not go off all crazy. If you do, you will get caught, and I will not be able to save you.”

  Lund didn’t appreciate being yelled at and he gritted his teeth. “I go down, you go down, Berg. Just remember that.”

  Berg took a deep breath. “Lund, it’s in hand. Just don’t go all mafia on me.”

  “They don’t take care of it, I will.”

  “Lund, if your guys get in the way, these are the kinds of professionals who will take your guys out. Do you get me? These are serious people.”

  “I’m serious too, Berg.”

  “I know. But this is what they do. Let them do it. Is the other guy still at the commune?”

  “I don’t know, Berg. The man I had watching the place has disappeared.”

  “All right. Keep your eyes open, but keep your distance. I’ll pass this on, and it will be taken care of.”

  “You better hope so,” said Lund, and he killed the call.

  Lund stood at the base of the steps in the cold morning air, his robe still open to the world, trying to slow his heart rate. He could feel the throbbing in his temples, and his left shoulder ached.

  He brushed it off and stamped up the steps into his house to call a truck to tow the Land Rover blocking his gate.

  * * *

  Flynn waited for noon. At one minute to the hour, he pulled out his phone and the battery and slipped one into the other. He fired the device up and waited for it to connect to the network. There was a series of beeps.

  The first was a text message from Gorski using their old unit code, letting him know tha
t all was quiet on his front. Flynn replied with the same message. The second beep was for a voicemail from an unknown number. Without a smartphone screen, he didn’t know the location, but the country code was +45 for Denmark. He retrieved the message and listened.

  “Mr. Flynn, this is Keel Rasmussen. Freja Rasmussen—or Jensen—is my wife. We met yesterday.” Flynn heard a long pause, as if Keel didn’t know what he wanted to say, or he wasn’t sure of the right words.

  “Mr. Flynn, I wonder if you would call me. I think that Freja maybe has more to say. I know there are things in her past that she chooses not to speak of, and I have never pressed her on it, well, because it didn’t matter to me. But she is not herself after speaking with you. There is something she needs to get off her chest, and I suspect she needs to say it to you rather than me. As you know, she is pregnant, and I worry about her like this . . . if you could call me, I would be grateful. This is my office number.” He left the number, and Flynn memorized it. “Thank you, Mr. Flynn.”

  The message ended, and Flynn dialed the number straight into the keypad. It rang six times, and then he got voicemail. He left a message saying he would try again and that he would be offline for a while and not to bother calling back. Then he hit the red button and ended the call. He pulled the battery from the phone again and put the pieces back in his pocket.

  Flynn still had time to kill, and walking around the streets of Copenhagen would just multiply the odds that the guys in the dark sedan or the guys in the Land Rover or the guys in the blue Corsa might run into him by accident. He consulted his map book and then ambled south and west from the park until he came to a neat little lane along which modern stores with large windows beckoned. He continued until his progress was halted by a large gathering of people. On second look, it was a large gathering of women, maybe twenty or thirty of them, all with small children in strollers. They were chatting and enjoying the pleasant morning and seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. He edged around the crowd and from the far side realized that they were all waiting for a cinema to open.